On this page: Message from the DeanAbout Lisa Shapiro
Message from the Dean
As Dean of the Faculty of Arts and as a Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, I take pride in working with a dedicated team of Associate Deans, faculty, staff and students to move our Faculty forward into McGill’s third century.
Our mission is to provide students with the tools to grow into critically thinking, imaginative individuals with a strong commitment to civic engagement. Students in our Faculty learn from professors who are leaders in the humanities, social sciences, public policy, information sciences, social work and religious studies. and who integrate their field-leading research into their teaching.
The Faculty of Arts was founded nearly 180 years ago and is the largest at McGill, with 13 departments, 4 schools and 4 institutes in addition to interdisciplinary programs, various research centres and affiliated units. With over 9000 students and 300 faculty members from Québec, Canada, and over 100 different countries, the Faculty of Arts plays a central role in university life. Our diverse community encompasses a wide spectrum of research interests and innovative scholarship with both a local and a global reach.
Equity, diversity and inclusion are explicitly connected to our educational mission. The Faculty of Arts is active in several initiatives to advance this, including the Indigenous Studies and Community Engagement Initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In connection with McGill’s Action Plan to Address Anti-Black Racism, we are welcoming new scholars, students, research programs and pedagogical changes across disciplines and in collaboration with the larger community across campus.
Our undergraduate and graduate programs offer a range of opportunities for focused study as well as experiential learning. Our students also benefit from an extensive internship program that proposes diverse international modes of studying and working.
Our Arts community is bound by the commitment to education and the pursuit of knowledge with a shared conviction of the importance of the arts in improving the world we live in.
About Lisa Shapiro
Professor Shapiro joined McGill as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Professor of Philosophy on October 1st, 2022.
Professor Shapiro earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh and her B.A. in Physics and Philosophy from Wesleyan University. She has also studied at the Université de Paris IV (Sorbonne) and X (Nanterre). She specializes in 17th and 18th century philosophy. Her research is focused on questions about the nature of a human being, the nature of thinking, and the place of emotions in human understanding. In exploring these questions, she is committed to the recovery and rehabilitation of the work of women in the history of philosophy. To this end, she is the Principal Investigator of the SSHRC Partnership project, “Extending New Narratives in the History of Philosophy,” an international collaboration engaged in retrieving philosophical works by women and individuals from other marginalized groups, with the goal of making the practice of philosophy more inclusive and diverse.
Prior to joining McGill, she was Professor of Philosophy at Simon Fraser University. During her career there, Professor Shapiro served as Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Associate Dean (Graduate Studies and Research/Research and International) in the Faculty, and Chair of the Department of Philosophy.
View Dean Lisa Shapiro's CV here.